More than four years after Bail Bonds Unlimited's executives pleaded guilty in a judicial corruption scandal, a lawyers regulatory panel recommends suspending the company attorney's law license.

Whether Kenneth Beck, 48, is sanctioned now depends on a recommendation from the full Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board and, finally, a ruling by the state Supreme Court.

The disciplinary board's three-member hearing committee suggested in a report made public last month that Beck's license be suspended for three months. The panel said it acted on a complaint filed by Norman Bowley, a Bail Bonds Unlimited accountant who served 20 months in prison as a result of the FBI's Wrinkled Robe investigation into Jefferson Parish Courthouse corruption.

Bowley alleged that he was acting on Beck's legal advice when he committed the crimes that sent him to prison and that Beck knowingly let him relay a message to Judge Alan Green at a time when Beck had a civil case pending in Green's court. Such a message could be considered an ex parte communication, generally forbidden in the legal and judicial profession.

The panel's inquiry centered on two events:

• On Oct. 22, 2001, Bowley, after talking with Beck, gave Green $5,000 in cash, supposedly a campaign contribution from Bail Bonds Unlimited, even though that was twice the maximum allowed by state law, cash contributions are prohibited and judges are supposed to accept donations only through political committees, not directly from donors.

Testimony at Green's trial in 2005 showed the judge and Bowley were lunch and golf buddies, and that Green regularly reduced bonds for criminal suspects so that Bail Bonds Unlimited could make money springing them from jail.

• After Green ruled in December 2001 against Beck's client in a slip-and-fall lawsuit against K mart Corp., Beck and Bowley conferred about approaching the judge to see if he was "mad" at Beck. Green later reversed his ruling and ordered K mart to pay Beck's client almost $803,000, more than she sought in the suit.

The disciplinary board's hearing committee said the prosecutor who presented the allegations against Beck failed to prove the case. "Neverthless (Beck) admitted to giving incorrect legal advice regarding the campaign contribution and that he did engage in ex parte communication with a judge while he had a matter pending" in the judge's court, the hearing committee said.

Beck was not charged with a crime in Wrinkled Robe, and he said Monday that the hearing committee essentially cleared him of permitting Bowley to pay a $5,000 bribe to Green. As for the ex parte communication, he said he did not realize at the time that he should have counseled Bowley against approaching the judge.

"That was a technical violation of the canons," he said. "If I did something wrong, I will accept the punishment."

The hearing committee was composed of lawyers Nannette Jolivette and Frank Walk and public representative Terry Cunningham. It issued its report July 28.